Her memories of that display cabinet are vivid, and it sums up their cottage – eclectic, unpredictable, full of clutter; every item laden with some significance.
There will be a lot to do, she thinks, as she sits down at her desk. A lot to sort through. Things to package up. Things to send to the charity shop, or keep for themselves. They might need to hire a skip for the junk, and call in an antiques expert to appraise the valuables, and it might not always be easy to tell the difference between the two.
She takes a pen, and starts to jot down a few points. Practical stuff. Things that she thinks are keeping her calm, until she realises that she is crying so hard her whole body is shaking in huge spasms, and her handwriting is unreadable.
Her hair is still soggy, and the kimono is getting soaked through as it drips over her shoulders and back, and it feels a bit like she is drowning in snot.
She snatches a tissue from the box on her desk, and angrily wipes her eyes and nose and face clear. She screws the tissue up, and throws it on the floor, to be dealt with later.
She’s been making the wrong list, she knows. This isn’t what her mother asked her to do in that awful video, looking so neat and tidy and thin.
Poppy picks up the pen again, and turns to a fresh page in her leather-bound notepad. She takes a deep breath, and starts. She’s going to be totally honest, just like her mother asked. She puts pen to paper, and it doesn’t take long at all.
There is only one item on Poppy’s guilt list:
EVERYTHING.
Job done, she slams the notepad shut, and wrings her soggy hair out in a damp ponytail. A small puddle of water builds up on the hardwood floor, and she dips her toe into it, for no good reason other than it’s there.
She’s made her list, and she’s had a shower, and she’s cried, and now her whole mood feels as empty as her grumbling stomach.
She doesn’t want to do the other thing that her mother asked her to do. She doesn’t want tothink about it. She doesn’t want to even let Rose back into her mind, let alone her life. It’s too hard, too nasty, too brutal. She might not survive.
For years now, she’s closed that part of her life off. Walled it up, like a mad woman in a Gothic novel – left it to starve to death in the hope that it would rot and crumble like an ancient skeleton, and eventually be nothing but a pile of dust on the ground.
It’s allowed her to function. To have a life. To have a career. To have fake friends. But she knows that old crone is still walled up in there: wailing, insane, still so, so hungry. If she lets her out, she’ll be devoured. If she lets herself think about it, like her mother has asked, she will think of nothing else – and her whole life will fall to pieces, crumpled up like the soggy tissue on the floor.
It’s too much, and she can’t do it. She won’t do it – not right now.
Chapter 17
‘Wassup, mum?’ says Joe, his usual morning greeting. It is after 11 a.m., and he has just staggered downstairs, wearing stripy pyjama bottoms and sporting a supreme case of bed-head. He’s tall, her boy, and is taking after his dad in looks at least.
He towers over Rose as she putters around in the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher. She’s barely slept, and when she did, it wasn’t what you’d call restful.
When she woke up, she felt normal – until she remembered. She’d had about twenty seconds of peace before the world came crashing down around her, and she disappeared back under the duvet, too exhausted to cry, too wrecked to move.
Since then, she’s cleaned the house, hidden her Guilt List, and put theStar Warsbook away in a cupboard where she hopes Joe will forget all about it. She’s still ashamed about going all Dark Side on Yoda.
Joe is reaching for the cereal box on autopilot when he stops, pauses, and looks around at the sparklingly tidy kitchen. He wipes his eyes, and then screws them up, like he’s not quite seeing properly. His hair is flopping over his forehead and, despite his height, he still looks impossibly young to Rose. Her little boy, but all stretched out and super-sized.
‘It’s really clean in here. Are you feeling all right?’ he says, giving her a lazy grin to let her know he’s joking. ‘Should I be calling 999?’
Rose says nothing, but pulls him in for a big, long hug. He lets her, but backs away after a few moments, looking borderline embarrassed. He might be a little boy to her, but he’s still 16 in the real world.
She realises she doesn’t know how to do this. She doesn’t have a clue what to say, or what to do. She doesn’t know how to break it to him gently, or how to do it in a way that won’t traumatise him, or freak him out for the rest of his life.
It’s the first time he’s had to deal with death, and truthfully, it’s the first time she has as well. Unless she counts the pets, which she doesn’t – Mum stage-managed those brilliantly, but this is far, far different.
Her own pain is still huge – a living, snarling beast inside her – but she knows she needs to set it aside, and do the right thing by her boy. Protect him from the kaleidoscope of hell that she’s going through, and help him deal with it.
‘Joe, come and sit down with me, will you?’ she says, gently pushing a lock of his too-long hair away from his face and tucking it behind his ear.
He looks confused, but follows her barefoot into the living room, plonking himself down on the armchair in that exhausted ‘I’m-so-busy-growing-I-don’t-have-any-energy-left’ way that teens have.
‘All right, Mum,’ he says, when she remains silent. ‘I’m sitting down. And I’ve seen too many TV shows to think this can mean anything good. What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Granny,’ replies Rose, staring off into space, her eyes fixating on the motes of dust that are floating in the bright sunlight filtering through the windows. ‘I got a phone call last night, and … well, she’s gone, Joe. Your granny died yesterday.’
